Can the 'luscious particularity' of Los Angeles catalyse a more expansive vision of its future?

摘要

'Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles', Frank Lloyd Wright once said. Yet for a city with little sense of collective consciousness, LA still exerts a beguiling hold on our cultural imagination. From the Bradbury Building to the Eames House, from Hollywood to Compton, LA's scrapbook of memories thrillingly confirms its reputation as a narcissistic dystopia at the farthest end of America; 'a low-density Babylon', according to historian Mark Girouard. Beneath the ravishing scenography and lotus-eating climate beats a heart of darkness.